So that phrase popped into my head; I wondered about the origin and looked it up. Thus far, I can’t find anything about the origin of the goat version, but the ghost version is documented. Have people just twisted it in a centuries-long game of “telephone” - much like “part and parcel” sometimes becomes “part and partial”?

I’m not feeling like looking into that right now.

Today is my first day off from work in ten days. It feels nice. I couldn’t sleep late because my internal clock is apparently set on work time whether I like or not, and even if I go to sleep at 3 a.m. (which I did). I was still up at 7 and that’s just silly. I’ve done a fair bit of work, though.

Last night, I helped my friend pack up his apartment. I got a little loopy off of the marker fumes when writing on boxes and this resulted in some entertaining cartoon illustrations/writing to indicate what was inside certain boxes. One box, for no sensible reason, now features an illustration of a headstone with the words, “Here Lies Joe” set in tall grass. The box that ended with a Ladytron CD has a cartoon of a busty pin-up girl gesturing to the word “Ladytron”, Vanna White-style.

Back on the home front, winter sheets are going on the bed and the winter comforter is in the duvet cover. It’s been flippin’ cold lately. The bathroom tiles have been sprayed with stinky bleachy stuff so now I just have to wait a few minutes and start scrubbing away at the ick. Laundry is being laundered. Boxes are ready to be dropped off at Goodwill later today. Productivity. Productivity.

But it also means I’m spending time alone with the stuff in my head. My brain wandered off to some strange semiotic plane where I was momentarily struck by the realization (and I’ve been struck by this same realization before, so it’s nothing earth-shattering) that words (words, that I love, that I use all the time… that are my favorite thing) are nothing - they’re just symbolic representations of our thoughts and feelings and merely representative of everything we see around us… until we imbue them with meaning. This isn’t the crazy part for me; the implications can make a person feel totally adrift and alone in this world when we realize that even when we’re talking to someone we feel we are deeply connected with—someone for whom we don’t need to parse out every shade of meaning and nuance—we aren’t seeing or hearing or feeling the same thing. We’re just not. We can’t.

Extrapolate that a little further and here’s something else that makes me feel empty and adrift: in the end, no one is really listening because no one can understand.

I should get back to cleaning; distractions are good.

I’ve been going through my books and determining which ones could be donated to Goodwill. Earlier today, three boxes of books were thus removed from my life. I filled up another and have empty boxes ready for the next wheat/chaff separation.

It feels strangely good. First, because I’ve donated them and can pretend that they’ll go on to have fantastically great lives in someone else’s hands. Second, because that’s three fewer boxes I’ll have to worry about packing up and moving with me when I find a new place. Third, because I got rid of some old college books as well as books that were recommended to me by people whose opinions held a lot of sway in my world 12 years ago but who I later came to see as mere mortals after all.

Essentially, lots of those books were an emotional purge; looking at them took me back to a specific time in my life when I was still fairly young, impressionable and not comfortable enough in my own skin to say, “You know what? I don’t like David Foster Wallace at all!” for fear of the people I quasi-pedestalled* losing respect for me because our tastes differed. Those days of youth.

* (Horrible neologism - sorry - but it wasn’t idol worship; I just had them up higher than they deserved to be.)

Anyway, among the books donated today was a copy of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. I hesitated for a moment, thought about keeping it so I could give it another shot - perhaps I just wasn’t in the frame of mind to enjoy David Foster Wallace at that time?? I looked at the back cover… read the back cover copy and saw that smug-ass author shot… and tossed it right in the box. See? I can’t even bring myself to post that photo here. I just can’t.

It’s getting late-ish for a Sunday night. I had some semblance of a weekend - which was very nice in an odd way. Even though I was pretty unhappy for most of it, it was an unburdened unhappiness. Lots of tension headaches and neckache. Lots of random around-the-house stuff like dyeing faded curtains, making pancakes and poached eggs and bacon for breakfast, doing dishes by hand since the dishwasher is broken, helping my sister do her hair for a wedding, laundry, ironing and blow-drying a wet book to save it from mildew and worse-than-death, assorted cleaning, purging of the books, etc.

And to treat myself, I ordered a MOO stickerbook of some of my Flickr photos. I don’t think you ever get too old for stickers, really.